Look, at my mother standing crookedly in a field,
like when she’s hanging off the end of a fag under the cooker hood,
a birch tree leaning, white-grey & black slashes.
Children play under her branches,
their oblivious limbs unwinding in the long afternoon,
her teeth still cloaked in foliage
until suddenly those terrific jaws gape,
grab at the string of a bright red kite that is leaping skyward
on a single sweet breath of hopeful exuberance
& in gulps this kite disappears too.
Tomorrow we will return,
with the perpetual obstinance
of scuffed knees whipping through the long dry grass
& aching arms held aloft like a gesture of protest
hauling paper & string behind,
like the promise of new green buds on bare branches.